


Stars for Monica

by Skinandpit



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Homophobia, Suicidal Ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 08:48:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2303777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skinandpit/pseuds/Skinandpit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re only glow in the dark stickers, greenish-yellow on her deep blue walls, but the way she remembers it, they’re on fire. They’re shaking, bright and beautiful and her mother is pasting them into the sky.</p><p>(A story about Monica, starting from childhood.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stars for Monica

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Shameless Femslash Week. Theme: Firsts.

In Monica’s first memory, her mother is hanging the stars. 

They’re only glow in the dark stickers, greenish-yellow on her deep blue walls, but the way she remembers it, they’re on fire. They’re shaking, bright and beautiful and her mother is pasting them into the sky.

Her mother has gnarled fingers. Her hair is a fuzzy mess. She always smells like the men’s cologne she buys from the drugstore. 

Monica is sitting on the bed, swinging her feet, and wishing for Mom to turn around.

###

When she’s seventeen, she kisses Amy Cheung beneath those stars. 

Monica draws the curtains and turns off the lights so she can show Amy the way they shine. Her hands, remarkably, are steady. Neither of them have done this before. She touches Amy’s face and then smiles and kisses Amy’s lips. When she draws away, Amy has this expression of terrible wonder.

This is the year Monica starts hiding half-empty bottles of Tylenol in her underwear drawer, just in case. 

Amy has broad shoulders and a rash of freckles that makes her look confused all of the time. She dyes her hair at least once a month, and so it is always brittle, ginger-brown instead of the blonde she wants. 

They go down to the river together to throw rocks and talk about how their parents fucked them over. They hold each other’s fingertips, pinkie over index, ready to slip away if anyone should walk by. 

Amy is her first kiss, her first girlfriend even if they don’t say the word, and the first person she’s ever been afraid of knowing. She goes to college a year later and Monica never sees her again. 

###

Monica’s first apartment is small and neat and lonely. She brings her stars with her and pastes them to the wall herself with white sticky tac that shows ever so slightly through the plastic. She spends a lot of nights curled beneath them, salt on her face, looking up at their light to make sure she’s still there.

Her parents call her weekly and she ignores her ringing phone.

She is too much. She is always in the way, always crying when she’s not supposed to, always excited when everyone else wants to be left alone. Her friends are tired of her. She drinks too much. Something is wrong with her. She doesn’t want them to know.

###

Frank is her first boyfriend. Francis Gallagher, with his long hair and his easy smile and the way he stands with his hands on his hips, body open like a challenge to the world. He offers to buy her a drink and she lets him, because she’s fallen in love with him right away

He tells her stories, long and strange and rambling, about his mother and a man he once slept with and his plans to fix the world. He reminds her of someone she can’t put her finger on, those deep trenches of sadness. 

She thinks: this man will not leave me. 

She leans over and whispers in his ear: “Do you want to see my sky?” 

###

Frank is Monday nights and a New Year’s promise. They learn how to play guitar together. They come up with a hundred beautiful schemes. When she’s more than she deserves to be, he takes her into his arms and kisses her hair and promises he loves her enough to carry all the the things she can’t help but being.

One night he peels all the stars off her walls and arranges them into a tight cluster above her bed. She comes back from the restaurant where she works and finds him sitting beneath them, his legs crossed, his big sloppy grin all over his face.

“What’s this?” she asks. 

“A new constellation,” says Frank. “I _invented_ it for you.” He spreads his arms. “I call it ‘Monica’.” 

“Oh _Frank_ ,” Monica says, and leaps into the bed with him. He catches her, and hooks her under his chin. 

“I had an idea,” he says, and Monica looks up. She kisses his cheek. 

“What is it, pumpkin?” 

He grins down at her. “Let’s make a _baby_.” 

“Oh, _Frank._ ” 

He promises her that she’s going to be a wonderful mother, and Frank, he’s never wrong.

###

Monica loses the stars, eventually. There was a party. There were people. These things happen, when you’re in love. They move into Frank’s aunt’s house and it doesn’t matter much, anymore. 

She is carrying Fiona when she sees the fabric. 

Monica loves doing this — she holds Fiona by the hand and they walk through the city until she gets tired, and then Monica picks her up and carries her all the way home.

The fabric is deep, dark blue, and there are little white stars printed on it. They aren’t in any constellation. They’re just laid out, geometrically, beautifully. 

By this point, Fiona is already in her arms, half asleep. Monica rubs her back.

“Okay,” she says, “Fiona, do you want Mama to buy you some sky?”

Fiona mumbles something into her shoulder. She’s such a serious child — she speaks when it suits her, and no earlier. 

It costs three dollars and seventy-five cents for the fabric. Frank is happily drunk when she gets home, his cheeks rosy, his smile big and calm. Monica enlists him in a hunt. They scramble around the house looking for thumbtacks. Fiona watches them from where she’s curled up on the couch, her eyes half-open.

Monica pins the fabric up over the little crawlspace under the stairs. “Look,” she says to Frank. “Fiona can hide in here, whenever she wants. And if we make little brothers and sisters, they can hide in here, too!” 

Frank smiles. He takes another swig from the bottle. 

She thinks Fiona must have fallen asleep, but when she turns around, she’s looking right at them. Monica smiles, and Fiona smiles very sleepily back. 

###

In Fiona’s first memory, her mother is hanging the stars.


End file.
